I
could see nothing through the peephole. The banging on the door
increased, and in the darkness sounded portentous. There had been a
power failure. I heard feet taking the steps two at a time.

“Sir,
it’s me, Jamaluddin!”

After
the overthrow of the General, I decided to take a flat in a secure
building, with guards, and an intercom. The power failure had
rendered the last useless tonight – as on many previous nights.
I recognised
Jamaluddin’s voice, though, and slipped back the bolt.

Behind
him stood my guest who had, apparently, gone up ahead of the guard.
Jamaluddin had assumed that I knew the man; in the light from the
torch, I could tell he was a total stranger.

“Mr.
Zafar Shah?”

“Yes?”

A
wet hand clasped mine.

“It
is an honour to meet you, Mr. Shah!”

There
was sufficient decency left in me from pre-democracy days in
Bangladesh to invite a man in after such a greeting. Having ensconced
ourselves in the cane chairs, we studied each other for a few seconds
in the weak light of the rechargeable lantern. My guest was a dark,
good-looking young man, who had come dressed for an interview in a
suit and tie. Bathed in perspiration, he begged for a glass of water
and insisted on getting it himself from the kitchen, following me
there and back.

“My
name is Wahid, Zafar sahib.
Wahiduddin Ahmed.” He had the annoying habit of young
businessmen of taking out a card from somewhere inside their
garments. I took it without taking my eyes off him.

“You
must be wondering why I’m here.”

Not
really: I was wondering who he was.

“May
I take off my coat?” I nodded, and he proceeded to disencumber
himself of his tie also. There was no fan, and no breeze filtered
through the windows. Only the muezzin’s last call to prayer
floated into the room.

“I
own a security company. SecureHome.”

“The
SecureHome murders,” I said slowly.

“Yes,
Zafar sahib.
You see, everyone knows and my business is hurting.”

All
I knew then was that there had been two murders in two apartment
buildings supposedly guarded by SecureHome.

“Let
me start from the beginning, Zafar sahib.
When General Harun-ur-Rashid was in power, I was an MBA student. I
was – and am - an avid fan of both the General and you, Zafar
sahib.
I have read all your newspaper articles and several of your books.
You predicted that with the overthrow of the General, and the
introduction of multiparty democracy, there would be violence, and a
strong demand for security. As soon as I passed, I borrowed from
banks and invested my own money in my security agency. The General
was overthrown and my firm prospered.”

“Until
these murders.”

“Until
these murders. I had first-mover advantage, and I still have a
market-share of 85%. My firm provided security for nearly nine out of
every ten luxury apartments, and for commercial facilities, like
banks and shopping centres, ”

There
was no post-adolescent bragging in his voice, however. Here was a
businessman, I felt, not a boaster, and he wanted to get back to
business.

“Whom
do you suspect? Your rivals?”

“Some
of them have taken business form me after the murders.”

“If
I remember correctly, both those murdered men were NGO people.”

“Top
NGO people. Very rich, very powerful and very close to donors.”

“And
very hard up too, from what I gather. Funds have been drying up for
some time. Donor fatigue. Competition among recipients. Motive enough
for murder?”

The
lantern began to lose its power, and I lit a candle. He sat back as
though struck dumb by a new idea.

“That
possibility,” he began in a subdued voice, “hadn’t
even occurred to me, Zafar sahib.”

“There’s
more. During last year’s elections, the NGOs tried to get
people not to vote for the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists are
now part of government and very angry.”

My
guest breathed an audible sigh of relief.

“I
am so happy I came to you, Zafar sahib!”

“I
would have thought I have multiplied your problems. Instead of
suspecting only your business rivals, you now have two other groups
of possible killers.”

“Yes,
but I was worried that somebody had infiltrated my organisation and
was using it to carry out these murders.”

“There’s
a fourth possibility: it could be sheer coincidence that the victims
were NGO directors living in apartments you protect. After all, you
can’t even open a newspaper these days without reading about a
dozen daylight murders.”

He
nodded slowly, mesmerised, then suddenly recalled something and
produced a colour photograph from a manila envelope. It was a blow-up
of a blood-stained right hand resting palm-down on a floor. The hand
had clearly drawn two vertical parallel lines in blood and stopped at
the base of the line on the left.

After
a minute’s silence, I asked, “What do you make of that,
Mr. Ahmed?”

“Please
call me Wahid, Zafar sahib;
I am years younger than you.”

“Well,
what do
you make of that, Wahid?”

“It
looks like the number eleven.”

I
sat back, holding the picture at arm’s length. “Let me
see if I’ve got this right. A man is stabbed, several times no
doubt, and has sufficient strength left in him to draw the number 11
with his own blood.”

We
watched the candle flame burn steadily, an insect floating in the
molten wax.

“The
other victim was shot, wasn’t he?”

He
nodded.

“Instant
death. He wouldn’t have had time...” I broke off. “I
want to visit the flat,” I resumed, tapping the picture with
the nail of my middle finger. “Who lives there now?”

“Only
his widow.”

When
his widow opened the door, I was ill-prepared for a beautiful, fair
woman in a black saree. Her sleeveless blouse revealed on her left
arm the faint twin marks where she had been inoculated against small
pox. More careful parents would have administered the vaccine
somewhere less public, but I had a feeling that I would have gained
access to them despite the safeguard.

“As
I mentioned on the phone, Mrs. Maksood, I’m here to talk about
your husband.” Her perfume was playing havoc with my central
nervous system, so I tried to sound as formal as I could.

“Please
call me Salma, Zafar,” she said in a rasping voice. Had she
been crying? She smiled and crossed her legs under her saree on the
sofa. “Let’s not talk about my husband.”

A
recalcitrant strand of jet-black hair detached itself and lay across
her face like a dark wish.

“What
shall we talk about, then? Salma.”

“Let
me make us some coffee first, Zafar.” I expected her to call
the servant, but she disappeared into the kitchen. We were alone in
the flat.

I
looked around the 2,400 square feet of expensive furniture, carpets,
loneliness and greed. The plate glass doors at either end of the
drawing-cum-dining space were concealed by lace curtains. Inquisitive
neighbours would be frustrated equally by the contrived gloom of the
two meagre lamps that let the night into the flat. The
air-conditioners thrummed like fingers on a sitar. It was cool and
hot inside: lust and death contended for control.

She
returned with two steaming cups which she placed carefully on the
glass-topped little wrought-iron table.

“Nice
place,” I remarked, taking a sip.

She
looked around with disapproval.

“I
wanted something bigger.” The intractable curve of hair, which
she had swept back over her right ear, returned. With a jingle of her
gold bangles, she patted the sofa. I moved into the space and a taste
of lipstick and coffee greeted my mouth. I felt her through the
immaterial chiffon.

The
power failure did not interrupt us: somewhere in the compound, the
generator woke like a noisy beast, the lamps re-lit themselves and
the fan whirred into motion overhead. Unlike mine, these were luxury
apartments, where nothing interfered with comfort.

Our
lovemaking proceeded at a frenetic pace under the blanket; finally
satisfied, she rolled over on her side. I panicked: I hadn’t
learned anything from her yet. The cool of the bedroom (for the power
had returned) conspired with her exertions to lull her to sleep. I
switched on the bedside lamp and spoke to her white back.

“Your
husband helped to overthrow the General,” I began.

“He
was a creep,’ she mumbled into the pillow.

“He
was in league with the donors.”

“He
didn’t fuck me for a whole year,” she rasped.

“Tell
me about the foreign donors, Salma.”

I
drew circles on her smooth skin, hoping to rouse her. I needn’t
have bothered. Her last sleep-heavy words included ‘player’
or perhaps ‘prayer’, I couldn’t tell.

The
night was still. Only the guard blew his whistle at intervals. The
mosquito repellent irritated my nose. I hadn’t relished being
in a dead man’s bed, still less did I like donning his
dressinggown. He had been murdered in the guest room, where I found a
bed, a book-shelf and an almira. The last contained the dead man’s
clothes – pajamas, shirts, trousers – and a litter of
papers and files at the bottom. I leafed through his diary.

The
last entry had been made more than a year ago. “Humayun and I
made final arrangements to pay our beneficiaries to vote against the
mullahs. The fundamentalists must be...” Here the page had been
torn off. The entry had been made in black ink – like the
others. On the other side, however, in red ink were two parallel
lines of which the one on the left ended at its base at the tear.
Above it was a squiggle I couldn’t make out.

I
asked Wahid for a list of all the luxury apartment buildings his firm
protected, along with addresses, maps and the names and positions of
NGO people who were owners or tenants in those buildings. I studied
the information for several days in my flat, then called him over.

“So,
Zafar sahib,
you suspect some NGO connection with the murders?”

“We
mustn’t anticipate events, Wahid. There will probably have to
be another murder before we make much progress.”

I
looked up from the map on my glass-topped cane table. The words had
had the desired effect of dampening his enthusiasm and concentrating
his mind.

“There
are six apartment buildings in a cluster in Dhanmandi.” I
pencilled a circle around the area on the map. “They are all
protected by your firm, and between them house six big NGO
directors.”

“Really?”

“Really.
The other clusters are in Gulshan,” – I tapped the map in
the appropriate places – “but this is the biggest
concentration. Now, this is what I want you to do, Wahid. Put me in
an apartment in one of the buildings, say, for six months, maybe
more.”

“Done,
Zafar sahib.”

My
new home instantly transported me to the set of Hitchcock’s
Rear
Window.
The only view was from the back in the east, from the two windows in
the two bedrooms, and the window between. Five apartment buildings
surrounded a two-storey house in the centre. But for this defiant
little structure, which I looked down on from the second floor - and
which interposed itself solidly between my six-storey building and
the one opposite - there would not have been even that wretched
square of sky.

On
the south-east, some trees survived: a palm with creepers over the
trunk; it was tall and concealed the verandahs of the eastern
building; then, mango trees and a neem
tree moved closer to my bedroom window in the south. Further
south-east, there was an under-construction building six-storeys
high, with bamboo scaffolding and jute sheets covering the concrete
face. A steady noise of drill machines and hammers proceeded from
this direction late into the evening.

The
only verandah on the south offered a view of – several
verandahs. (Ditto the drawing-room window in the north.) The water
dripping from the air-conditioner in the bedroom in the southern
flat, on a level with mine, had generated, like a stream running over
a white rock, a patch of lichen at one corner below the windowsill.
Water dripped from the air-conditioners that protruded obscenely from
below and above the windows. Drip, drip, drip – the sound of
one air-conditioner making water on another. The verandah above was
overgrown with money plant. The one below had pots and pans, clothes
hanging to dry, a disused treadmill, a red bucket and a red bin. This
was the flat in which one of the directors, Juned Huq, lived. I only
had to step into the verandah to look straight into his drawing-room
when the curtain over the plate glass door was drawn. Although his
bedroom was right next to mine, the curtains were never parted, the
windows were never opened and the air-conditioner was almost always
humming.

Similarly
on a level with mine, Anwar Karim’s flat in the eastern
building also gave me access - through my binoculars. Last night,
Anwar slipped inside the mosquito net; a lady in a nightie –
presumably Mrs. Karim - dropped the curtains, and the lights went
out. A half-hour later the bathroom lights went on; I feared that I
had caught the couple at an intimate moment.

A
third director, Fiza Chowdhury, lived in my building on the fifth
floor, so snooping in her direction would be severely restricted.
Again, to my frustration, two other directors had their flats in the
northern apartment complex – on the fourth and fifth floors.
Only one director lived in the north-east building. Unfortunately, he
occupied the first floor, which was blocked out by the two-storey
building that served as nucleus to the taller giants. And the
north-north-east corner was only partly tenanted, and the director
hadn’t yet moved in, though he used the address. I consoled
myself with the thought that, at least, I was close to the six
NGO-wallahs.

The
apartment buildings had high walls, barbed wire, security guards and
intercoms. You got a feeling of what it’s like being a prisoner
-- the grills, the small patch of sky, the space hemmed in by tall
walls of buildings....Democracy means keeping out the demos, fences
against the unfree: around the Palestinians, the Native Americans in
their reserves, the black person in her ghetto and his cell, the
refugee in the leaky boat headed for Down Under, or just under.

There
was the square of sky – poetry set in concrete in the evening,
when the sun turned the windows on the top-most floor golden, and at
dawn smudged the blue-black clouds, waking to disperse, as it rose
through the outstretched fingers of the palm. After it rained, the
roof of the house reflected the white fluorescent lights of the
opposite windows, like a mirror. Every day, the same beauty.

The
birds, of course, underlined everything. Even the crow. At sunrise,
the first mynas settled on the topmost twigs of the mango tree;
whenever one of them took off, the white of the wings were plainly
visible. The crows, perched on TV antennae and roof, obliterated the
distinction between the free and the unfree with every raucous caw.
But it was the song of the magpie-robin that made you forget that
there were any distinctions, only joy.

One
last, brutal detail drove home the fact of concrete. The crickets.
There were crickets in those meagre trees and they shrilled
incessantly, making themselves clearly heard when the din of
construction and far-away traffic subsided in the evening. They
whispered of villages, thatched roofs, coconut palms, grass....

Playing
peeping Tom got me nowhere very fast. I needed to get into the NGO
community, a world apart, and one where, as the General’s
lieutenant during military rule, I was persona non grata.

I
was, therefore, very grateful when the intercom rang one evening to
announce Nazma. “Let her up.”

Nazma
headed straight for the kitchen while I waited on the sofa. A circle
of perspiration clung to her back.

“I
brought you some kabab,” she yelled, but needn’t have.
The aroma permeated the space.

“Great!
I was feeling a little peckish.” I rubbed my hands in
anticipation.

“It’s
for your dinner, Zafar. Will five pieces of nan
be enough?”

She
was stamping on the cockroaches, so I remained mum. Five pieces of
nan:
what did she think I was, an ogre?

“You
should fire your charwoman. Look at these glass rims. Ugh!”

She
emerged from the kitchen with a tray and two glasses, stopped in her
tracks, turned and paused at the window.

“What
a view!”

Sitting
across from me, she announced, “I brought some pineapple juice.
It’s in the fridge. Don’t let the charwoman drink it
all.” Her forehead gleamed with sweat.

I
sipped some juice: it was bitter-sweet.

Nazma
was nice, a plain Jane. In her purple shalwar, kameez and dupatta
worn broad over her ample chest, with lipstick to match, she looked
motherly. She was an NGO worker, not one of the big guns, just an
employee. She’d just as readily work for the government, or in
the private sector: bread-and-butter, no loyalty beyond the family,
no ideology. I liked her.

“Nice
flat,” she commented, looking around.

“Yes,
shame about the view.”

She
giggled. “I’m sorry about that. I couldn’t
help....”

“No,
no, no. You’re right. If I spend a few minutes in the
guestroom, I know what they are having for dinner. The smell of curry
paste and masalas!
Last night, while I was eating chicken, they were having fried fish.
If I could figure out how to get to the house before it’s torn
down and turned into a six-storey building like this, I’d go
over and pretend to try pot-luck.”

She
was laughing so wildly that she had to put her glass down.

“How
are the children?” I asked by way of preliminary.

“Fine.”
She nodded with satisfaction.

“And
Kamal?”

“I
can never thank you enough, Zafar, for saving his life.”

Major
Kamal, a hothead in those days, had tried to engineer a coup against
the General. I had known Nazma’s family since childhood. She
came to me for help. I went to the General, who refused to speak to
me for weeks. He finally pardoned the young man, provided he left the
country. He couldn’t cut it abroad, so he returned when the
General lost power.

I
shied from the subject. “What have you got on the NGOs for me?”

She
leaned back, and sighed. I feared the worst. The water-pump droned
below as it filled the water tanks on the roof. A saw grated at the
construction site. A myna chirruped faintly. A baby cried. Then the
evening call to prayer drifted mellifluously from a nearby minaret.

“Not
much. They’re such a closed group. Like a secret society.
Something interesting did happen before the last election, but I
don’t have details. There was a conspiracy on to rig the
election against the fundamentalists. This much I know for certain.
However, there was some falling-out among the directors of the NGO
association. The minutes have either been destroyed, or meetings were
held in secret.”

“Not
everyone wanted to go through with the rigging, do you think?”
The ice-cubes had cooled the glass around my fingers. The day was
muggy, and the fan ineffective.

“No,
it was something more drastic. Some people were raising questions
about donor power, about selling out to them.”

“ Who
were those people?”

“I
got only one name. Your neighbour, Fiza Chowdhury. She lives on the
top floor”

“I
haven’t had a look at her yet.”

“I
heard some interesting chit-chat about her when I was coming up in
the lift. There were two other women. One of them said: ‘Looks
like Fiza’s stopped wearing her saree below her navel”.
The other one said: ‘And she’s wearing a camisole beneath
her kameez.’ Can you believe it, Zafar?”

“I
wish I’d seen Fiza when she was wearing her saree below her
navel and no camisole under her kameez.”

“You’re
worse than those women.”

Monsoon
came, without relief. Whenever it stopped raining, the heat and the
humidity resumed. I had deliberately eschewed the use of
air-conditioners lest I miss out on external sensations. Events soon
proved my wisdom.

There
was a big do at Juned Huq’s – his verandah practically
touched mine, as I have described. Expensive cars flanked the street
and caused a small traffic jam as the guests stepped out before the
black gate and the chauffeurs parked their vehicles.

I
put a chair in my verandah, up against the wall where I couldn’t
be seen. The scent of biriani
and curry teased my nostrils. My first two vigils were fruitless: the
air-conditioners hummed, water dripped, trishaw-bells tinkled and
mosquitoes bit me.

Around
2 a.m. I returned to my watch. My perspiration dried in the faint
breeze. I heard the familiar thud of bricks unloaded from trucks. An
insomniac crow cawed in the mango tree, and a mango dislodged itself
from a branch and dropped with a clang on a tin roof. A mole
squeaked. The sonorous call of the crickets mingled with the faint
murmur of Juned’s guests.

A
momentary break in the darkness and the murmur told me that the glass
door had been opened. A whiff of perfume revealed a woman’s
presence. But a man spoke first.

“Have
a sip!”

“I
don’t drink.”

“Since
when, Fiza?”

A
mosquito chose this moment of all moments to buzz in my right ear. I
dared not move, so shook my head ever so slightly.

The
power failed, and the generators roared. I could hear nothing but
mere fragments. On top of it all, it began to rain.

“...Sinful...Let
me go!”

Fortunately,
the power returned quickly and the last generator moaned and went
silent in the distance.

“I’m
getting wet.”

“That’s
nice”

“That’s
not what I meant, Paul! ”

“What’s
the matter with you? We had something....”

Again,
a break in the murmur and darkness told of the door opening and
closing.

“Bitch!”
exclaimed Paul.

A
few seconds later, laughter and light again for a moment. I raised my
right hand carefully to my earlobe and, with immense pleasure,
crushed the mosquito. The water was salty, seeping into my mouth from
my forehead. I was soaked through. Nevertheless, I gave the couple
twenty more minutes to return. The wind lifted, and the rain pattered
on the verandah, trickled down the telephone wires and pipes, and
drummed on the wildly rustling leaves. A storm.

I
was woken in my bed by the doorbell ringing furiously.

“What’s
the matter, Wahid? Can’t I even sleep...?”

“Zafar
sahib,
she’s been murdered.”

I
went from sleepy to hyper-alert.

“Fiza
Chowdhury?”

“Yes!
In the verandah across from yours!” Wahid was hysterical.

It
was day, and the horns were blaring in the street, and the deafening
noise of construction work had resumed. On the other verandah, on the
right hand wall, plainly to our view, were two ragged parallel lines
drawn in blood.

The
charwoman had found her at around 7:00. She had been stabbed three
times, twice in the belly, once in the back. An initial police guess
was that she had been dead for around three to four hours. That
means, the murder probably occurred between 3:00 and 4:00 in the
morning.

“Correct
me if I am wrong, Wahid: the first guests left around three and the
last guests around 4:00.”

“How
did you know, Zafar sahib?
That’s exactly the statement Juned Huq gave to the police.”

“Figures.
Everyone is everyone’s alibi.”

His
eyes were wide. “You’re not suggesting that they all...?”

“No,
I’m not suggesting the Orient
Express.
The coroner’s report will never be any more accurate. Not
everyone would have wanted to kill her. But some people did, and
they’ll never be tried.”

A
policeman in khaki and blue stood looking at us from the verandah. He
stood in a pool of blood before the disused treadmill. We retreated
into my bedroom. I lay down, exhausted. Wahid pulled up a chair.

“Did
you hear anything, Zafar sahib?”
He produced coloured photographs of Fiza’s dead body. He must
have had good contacts in the police force.

I
hesitated before replying, “No.” I put the pictures away,
glancing at them rapidly.

“Why
did they kill her?”

“The
same reason they killed the others. Do you remember an essay I once
wrote called To
Whom Can I Speak Today?”

He
nodded dumbly.

“The
title was from a poem: Dispute
of a Man, Weary of Life.
It was written during the First Intermediate Period of Egypt, when
the state collapsed into anarchy. People began to identify with
Osiris: so far that had been the prerogative of the Pharaoh. The
Pyramid Texts, too, were democratised. A secular way of life gave way
to an other-worldly obsession.”

Wahid
nodded more vigorously now. “I remember the poem.”

I
recited.

“To
whom can I speak today?

The
gentle man has perished,

The
violent man has access to everybody.

“To
whom can I speak today?

There
are no righteous men,

The
earth is surrendered to criminals.

“You
had started your business on the premiss that democracy would bring
violence. But anarchy, Wahid, has another effect on the mind. It
makes people turn to religion.”

“Yes,
I remember the last stanzas. Forgive me, Zafar sahib.
But all these murders and stress have robbed me of my memory. I feel
so helpless.” He buried his haggard face in his hands. The last
stanzas proceeded from between his palms.

“Nay,
but he who is yonder

Shall
be a living god,

Inflicting
punishment upon the doer of evil.

“Nay,
but he who is yonder

Shall
be a man of wisdom,

Not
stopped from appealing to Re when he speaks.”

I
remained silent for a while. The fan whirred overhead, and the crows
cawed remorselessly for carrion.

“We’re
all under stress. The three dead NGO directors perhaps even more.
Some of them were turning to Allah. They tried to keep their new
faith a secret from their fellow NGO-wallahs. They failed. Fiza
stopped drinking, started dressing sober, prayed five – maybe
six – times a day.”

“But
what about the number eleven?”

“That’s
not eleven, Wahid. Fiza used her last atom of strength to redeem
herself in the eyes of Allah: she was trying to write Allahu-Akbar,
Allah is Great. She had strength enough only to manage the alef
and the lam.
Since the Arabic script goes from right to left, the hand, in both
our cases, rested finally at the base of the left line. That would
not have been the case with the number eleven, though I did toy with
that possibility at first.”

He
heaved a sigh in which there was little relief.

“I’ve
decided to quit this business, Zafar sahib.
What do you advise?”

“Good
decision. Do you have a family?”

“A
son, and my wife is expecting.”

“Take
your family out of the country. Go somewhere nice and authoritarian:
Dubai perhaps. You’re a talented young man. Quit Bangladesh.”

He
took my advice. The other day I got an e-mail from him from Abu
Dhabi. He is working in a bank. The pay is good, and the hours are
not too unreasonable. He spends more time with his family than he
used to. Above all, he feels they are safe.

Iftekhar Sayeed is a freelance journalist and English teacher who was born and lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has contributed to The Danforth Review, Axis of Logic, Enter Text, Postcolonial Text, Southern Cross Review, Opednews.com, Left Curve, Mobius, Erbacce, The Journal and other publications. He and his wife love to tour Bangladesh.